Reasons to get a .eu name
Put simply, it is cheap to register a .eu domain name and it
stops anyone else getting the same name. Expect to pay about £35
for one year if you apply today using a pre-registration service
(explained below).
If you don't, and someone else gets the name first, legal
proceedings will be expensive.
In a dispute, your choice is to go to court or arbitration.
Court is generally more expensive than arbitration – you can easily
spend £10,000 on a domain name dispute before a court. With
arbitration, you will pay at least €1,190 in fees to the Czech
arbitration court (which will handle all .eu disputes), but that's
before you hire a lawyer. It's still cheaper to avoid a dispute if
possible.
We are seeking out-law.eu and pinsentmasons.eu in case anyone
else tries to get them. We can apply for them now because we have
registered trade marks for both brands. Do we need the .eu names?
Possibly not; they will be added to our ever-expanding portfolio of
names we do not use. But it's still cheaper to build this portfolio
than face a single dispute.
It's difficult to imagine anyone else wanting pinsentmasons.eu.
Unfortunately, that logic does not prevent cybersquatting. Perhaps
surprisingly, cybersquatting has never gone away. Every day, the
WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center (which handles .com, .net and
.org disputes) sends an email listing its latest decisions. Today's
email listed five transfers to brand owners: savechildren.info,
vw-service.com, wwwuniversalorlando.com, aerlingus.net and
chinacasio.com. You can guess the brand owner in each case.
Why did anyone bother to register aerlingus.net? Ireland's
national airline recovered the name from a registrant known as
"Aeroplane Enthusiasts," according to today's report. The
registrant apparently told Aer Lingus Limited that it would be
using the name for an aircraft enthusiasts' website. If true, the
choice of name was misguided. In any case, the site never
materialised; instead, the name pointed to rival Ryanair's website.
So Aer Lingus took action. The registrant, probably paying £35 or
less for the name, did not bother to reply to the complaint, and
Aer Lingus won. But it won at a cost of US$1,500 in WIPO's fee plus
whatever it was charged by its representative,
F.R.Co., a firm of patent and trade
mark attorneys in Dublin. It seems a waste of money, but Aer Lingus
was right to take action.
This was just one example from today's rulings. There are
numerous disputes like this one. To minimise the prospects of
getting into such a dispute ourselves, we have filed so-called
defensive registrations for out-law.eu and pinsentmasons.eu. This
is a small price to pay.
How to get a .eu name
Registration is open to any individual, company or organisation
in the EU, but not yet. The launch of the domain will be phased,
with owners of registered national or Community trade marks getting
priority access.
A Sunrise Period begins on 7th December 2005 for these brand
holders to snap up names that exactly match their marks. If you and
another company have the same trade mark for different purposes,
therefore an equal right to the same .eu name, allocation is on a
first come, first served basis.
There are many accredited
sellers of .eu domain names. You can approach one today and
they will likely accept pre-registrations. Pre-registration does
not guarantee that you will get the name; but it does guarantee a
quick submission of the application when the doors open. If your
application fails, much of the pre-registration fee is likely to be
refunded.
The next phase launches on 7th February 2006. From that date,
other names reflecting rights protected under national laws can be
registered as .eu names – e.g. unregistered trade marks, company
names and distinctive titles of literary works.
On 7th April 2006, the Sunrise Period ends and registrations
open on a first-come-first-served basis.
Some .eu registrations will be from those wanting to highlight
the European aspects of their organisations; but most registrations
will likely do nothing – or nothing more than redirect traffic to
an existing website that operates under another domain name
suffix.
Don't expect to see anything at out-law.eu if our registration
is successful. All we're doing is getting up early to lay our towel
on a little deck chair by the pool of cyberspace.
By Struan
Robertson, Editor of OUT-LAW. These are the personal views of
the author and do not necessarily represent the views of Pinsent
Masons.
